AGE OF CORAL REEFS. 189 
are covered gives them an imposing appear- 
ance, recalling the islands of the Pacific. 
But this is not the end of the story. Travel- 
ling inland from the shore-bluffs, we cross a low, 
flat expanse of land, the Indian hunting-ground, 
which brings us to a row of elevations called 
the Hummocks. This hunting-ground, or Ever- 
glade as it is also called, is an old channel, 
changed first to mud-flats and then to dry land 
by the same kind of accumulation that is filling 
up the present channels, and the row of hum- 
mocks is but an old Coral Reef with the Keys 
or islands of past days upon its summit. Seven 
such Reefs and channels of former times have 
already been traced between the shore-bluffs and 
Lake Okee-cho-bee, adding some fifty thousand 
years to our previous estimate. Indeed, upon 
the lowest calculation, based upon the facts thus 
far ascertained as to their growth, we cannot 
suppose that less than seventy thousand years 
have elapsed since the Coral Reefs already known 
to exist in Florida began to grow. 
When we remember that this is but a small 
portion of the peninsula, and that, though we 
have no very accurate information as to the 
nature of its interior, yet the facts already ascer- 
tained in the northern part of the State, formed, 
like its southern extremity, of Coral growth, justify 
the inference that the whole peninsula is formed 
